


2129

by shadesofbrixton



Series: Theme and Variations: The AU Collection [6]
Category: A Knight's Tale (2001)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-08-20
Updated: 2005-08-20
Packaged: 2019-10-09 13:36:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17407874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadesofbrixton/pseuds/shadesofbrixton
Summary: Explores William Gibson's "Neuromancer" universe. Geoff is a hacker assigned to isolate a virus from the Internet. Wat and his family run a cyber cafe that has been compromised.





	2129

_i'm gonna take you dancing deep down into the dawn_  
_one bright morning when we meet saint peter_  
_i'm not gonna give a damn if he don't let us in_  
_'cause you and me baby we were born ten thousand years ago_  
_i know it sounds crazy but we got ten thousand more to go_

\- 2129, Alabama 3

  
  
  
  
  
It's three in the morning, but Geoff doesn't sleep.  
  
He hasn't slept in four or five days, by his figure, but the days run differently when he's working. His clients demand fast work, and this is the longest – by far – that he's ever taken on a problem, but the virus won't isolate, and chasing it is hard work when you're not jacked in. As a programmer, Geoff won't jack in. He knows better than most the dangers therein, and it's a vice that most of his brothers in arms fall to.   
  
Geoff figures he has enough addictions without piling cyberspace on top.   
  
The way a programmer's mind is set up, a child is developed from birth by the company as a future employee. Back in the day, when all the programs were just being set up, it was different. It was whoever could think the fastest, or the strangest, or the best. And then once everything was set up, and the program creators were shipped off to the institution for neurological repair, the kids could be raised up in the image of the company.  
  
Except.  
  
Every once in a while, every few years or so, there is someone with a natural talent for it. This is what they'd told Geoff in the small green room, after they'd pulled him off the streets of Chiba. Someone smart enough to avoid the temptation of implants, someone without any Yakuza affiliations, someone whose brain didn't see shapes or colors or people, but  _programs_.  
  
Geoff refused the job and the hit – this was back before he used – and they let him go.  
  
He was back before the night was out, injected with that first taste of speed, and set up in Night City.   
  
He tries not to think about it, now. A job is a job, and his brain will take anything that's challenging enough. It's more than a natural high at this point, the speed does have to be replenished. But the natural brain, again, the natural talent, it saves him. It's kept him employed twice as long as his burnt coworkers, the other boys and girls who try to surf the Sprawl.   
  
A consensual hallucination, they call it. Geoff, eyes closed, wires trailing from the nodes attached to the gloves on his hands and the mask over his face, prods forward in his mind. His eyelids flicker. But even hallucinations can get sick. Even hallucinations can be infested. And with billions of brains jacked into the same mainframe, one virus can lead to thousands of brain dead people, and billions in lawsuits against Night City.  
  
In his mind, Geoff is in the mainframe. The Sprawl, they call it, but even that seems too limited in Geoff's vocabulary. Even a sprawl has ends, but this, this mess, it has no boundaries. It goes on and on and on and the circles around and starts again, like the earth but so much bigger and, if it's even possible, so much dirtier.  
  
The Sprawl has many purposes, but the rooms only have one – people coming together, lonely people, for whatever excuse they can think up. Research, family bonding, sex, support groups. It's these that will be affected – not the core data that is stored in the Sprawl, but the people who jack in to access the information. The rooms where the people gather, come together, images of their projected selves – the way they'd like to be. There's no one skinny or ugly or old in the Sprawl. There's no one real, either. It's a two part problem: No one can ever be identified outside of the Sprawl because their mental image is never accurate, and no programmer can ever jack in because their minds can't focus on any one thing long enough to create an image.  
  
So Geoff sneaks through like hot wind through the street, a rush of numbers and light that no one will ever notice. He hunts from room to room, searching for something that shouldn't be there, the virus he's been tracking that's leaving empty skulls and a burn of red in its wake.   
  
And there – there. The medical logs, there, the flash of red, there, and Geoff runs, pushes, goes, there –   
  
And then he's flat on his back, sucking dirty air into his lungs, a tangle of wires in his hands, blinking blindly up at the ceiling.   
  
He pushes himself upward, groans, reaches for the small packet of white dust that sits next to his console, and looks at the screen as he dips his finger and thumb inside. The screen blinks blankly at him.  
  
Target lost.  
  
Geoff swears, yanks his gloves back on, snorts a healthy amount of the powder, and goes back in.  
  


* * *

  
  
There's only a certain amount of technology that Wat can take before it makes his head hurt.  
  
It's not a particularly lucrative way of thinking, but, then, his life isn't a particularly lucrative one to begin with. Working on the cheap side of town, in an actual Internet Café, Wat doesn't expect to make a whole lot of money. The jack ports came cheap, and the people who can't afford personalized integration for their homes or offices are the people who come to him. They don't have a whole lot of money, or they've been tossed out for using too much, but they pay in advance and Wat has good cred.   
  
He has to monitor the jack points, all of them, manually, which is why he spends most of his time jacked in. Rhys and Rosamund – he isn't always sure which, since the surgeries they look even more alike – take shifts with him, eight hours on and sixteen hours off, and so they go, every day. Every single day. The Sprawl doesn't take holidays, and neither does he.  
  
Unlike most of the people he services, Wat has never plugged into the Sprawl itself. He's used the border rooms, but he's never stepped outside the small area of jack ports that he patrols.   
  
For all intents and purposes, Wat is a human firewall.  
  
And it's because he can still be called human that this works – Wat has had little medical upgrade, and no microsurgeries. He has not had his memory expanded, or weapons installed beneath his fingernails. His eyes are the color he was born with, his hair grows at a natural rate, his skin has never been powertinted or bleached or modified at all, except with chemical baths that have replaced water and a bar of soap.   
  
This would all be easier, Rhys informs him, if he would simply install a permanent jack. It's easy, and Rhys shows him by unclipping the small metal bit at the back of his ear, or pulling up the data entry port nestled in his inner arm. It makes Wat's skin crawl, and it's times like those that he has to unplug and go away, away from the sound and the pressing closeness of their predominantly Asian population.  
  
Sometimes, Wat wonders if people who look like him are left in the world.  
  
He unplugs, rubs at the sore spot below his ear where a headache is starting, and cracks his back as he stands. Rosamund takes the controllers from him, and the three dozen or so customers who are jacked in don't even flutter an eyelid.   
  
It's all fluid now. Automated and perfect, and yet, somehow, terrifying at the root of it.  
  
He stumbles out back, into the steaming alley, and rests his head against the stone. The pavement glistens wetly under the neon – there are no dark corners in Chiba, and there is no night.   
  
Wat inhales and exhales a few times, thick lungfulls of steam and sweat and pollution, and listens to the rattle of the rubbish bins nearby. Waste is dropped inside, and when he opens his eyes again, Roland is watching him, an odd grin on his face.   
  
"Alright, then," Roland says.  
  
"Sure," Wat says, pulls his head off of the wall, manages to get his hands out of his pockets. "Yeah, sure. Alright."  
  
Roland comes and leans next to him, both of them facing the opposite wall, where Roland's parlor is shutting down for the morning. "The headaches are starting again," Roland says. Wat doesn't disagree, because it's true. "You know I could fix that. Just a little chip, right back of the optical nerve."  
  
"I know," Wat says, but what he means is 'no thanks.'  
  
"No charge," Roland tells him warmly, and scratches at his bearded chin. "Seein' as we're neighbors and all. And your family gives me good business, anyway."  
  
"Thanks," Wat says, crosses his arms over his chest. "I'll try the medicine again."  
  
Roland shrugs, scratches at what looks like a fresh tattoo. The green ink flutters under his fingers, licks up his fingertips. Wat blinks to clear his vision, and the ink is stagnant again. "Standing offer," Roland clarifies, and smiles at him. It's a kind smile, but Wat doesn't particularly trust any brand of them. He nods back, and Roland dusts off his hands, pulls himself away from the wall with a bit of noise about closing up, and heads back down the alley toward the storefronts.   
  
When Roland's a safe distance away, Wat leans his head against the brick again, closes his eyes, and tries to cancel out the throbbing in his skull.  
  


* * *

  
  
It's another three days before they take Geoff off of the case for his failure. It's dictated to a new programmer, and something else is put in Geoff's lap. He snaps through it in an hour, convinces himself he hasn't lost his touch, and then tries to sleep. He hasn't slept at all, really, not with the speed carving a hole in his skull, and he can't get his brain to shut up long enough for his mind to shut down.  
  
He finds his boots and his glasses and goes out, the rain hot on his arms and soaking through his shirt. It makes him feel grubby, but he doesn't really mind that much, as it means he's actually  _feeling_  something, and his speed-laced brain takes him in long strides down the corridors of the Night City embankment.   
  
The company owns a whole quarter in the north half of the city, which is where most of the companies make their space. Geoff travels to Tateyama, as far south as he can on the train, and then he walks. It's here that he can find peace for his brain, because the sounds and the lights and the scent is all louder and bigger and more awful than anything his own mind can conjure up. In the south of the city, it's whores and techs and users and dealers and parlors for artificial change. Geoff checks his cred card, and wonders if he has enough to buy more speed, or a memory implant, or both.  
  
He decides on neither, heads toward the arcade, and loses himself in the crowd.  
  
Hours later, after the rain has stopped and the sun is creeping up imperceptibly, Geoff wends his way back north. On foot this time, through the canals and the poor side of town, and a small storefront catches his eye.  
  
The Wired Dragon, it reads, and there's a decal of something green with wings that doesn't really look like any dragon Geoff's ever seen, floats on the top. Through the glasses, the dragon writhes and hisses at him, numbers streaming out from the data ports in calm green and black and blue and grey.   
  
The glasses are necessary.  
  
When Night City found Geoff, hauled him in and jacked him up, gave him his first bag of speed and pushed him into the Sprawl, he'd gone in the same way most of the programmers did. He came out fastest, and most accomplished, and best at his job. He came out most efficient and most creative thinker, oddest solution for any given problem. He also came out mostly blind.  
  
The glasses he wears let him see things the way they're written. The way everything has a data code, it can be read in his mind. Everything has a color, a signature pattern, a shape. The world is made up of programs, and Geoff is a programmer, and more at home in it than any of his sort.   
  
Geoff grins up at the sign, and walks in through the doorway. The door is missing – has been ripped off of its hinges or removed – but the place is warm, from the hum of consoles. There are people plugged in, even at this hour, and a monitor at the top of the room, a Modified girl in black leather at the top, watching them all.  
  
He turns his smile on her. "I didn't even know places like this still existed." Not condescending, maybe, but still rude. His brain is coming down off of the high, and things are starting to move at normal speeds again. Including his words.   
  
"There are some," she says, her eyes closed and flickering. Split consciousness, to be able to talk to him and be plugged in at the same time. Definitely a Modified girl. "You in or out?"  
  
"Out," Geoff says, turning to look at a row of people jacked in. "Programmer. Can't."  
  
She makes a noise of distracted understanding. "What're you doing here, then?"  
  
"Be polite," comes a male voice, and Geoff turns again to see. Another sibling, perhaps, Modified like the first, male. Maybe male. Probably male.   
  
"Looking for a virus," Geoff tells him, and pulls out his ID card to show the man, and then takes it back.  
  
"Thought that sort of thing was usually done in Night City," the man says, frowning, scratching at his black hair near where his jack point would be.  
  
Geoff shrugs. "Sometimes legwork is needed. Have you seen anything odd in your rooms?"  
  
The man shrugs, and turns to the girl, who shakes her head. Then they both look at Geoff. "No," the boy says. "Sorry. What's it look like?"  
  
Geoff fumbles for a description, and ends up with, helplessly, "Red." It's difficult to describe programs to people who don't know what they look like, but red is an unusual enough color to be noticed. "See anything, let me know." He gives the man a thin paper square with his contact information encrypted into it.  
  
"Sure," says the man, and Geoff nods to them both, and turns to go.   
  
Something at the back of his brain itches all the way home, but he ignores it, thinking it's the withdrawal.  
  


* * *

  
  
Wat can't afford the train, so he hitches onto the back of a delivery van and skates up to the Ibaraki border for free. It'll be harder to get home, but getting home isn't what he's worried about right now.  
  
He checks surreptitiously for the data square in his left pocket, but he's read the information on it so many times, he doesn't have to pull it out.   
  
When he reaches the gates to Night City, the guards don't stop him, or ask for his ID. There's no law and no restriction against visiting Night City – it's only getting out that can be the problem. Still, he has no plans to pass by any recruiting station, and no plan to interact with any of the executives. Wat figures that he probably isn't safe, but he's as close to it as he can manage. Rhys knows where he is, and he's got his heavy, high-collared leather jacket on. The one that can usually stop a knife blade.   
  
He doesn't like to think that there are probably worse things up here than knives to worry about.  
  
The address embedded in his mind, and on the flimsy piece of parchment in his pocket, turns out to be a rusted out looking flat eight stories up. It's a warehouse space, divided into lofting – long, large rooms that house consoles and beds. The outside of the building has boarded up windows, as though there is no one inside. Wat figures Night City just doesn't like to pay to repair all the glass that gets broken around here all the time. High frequency resonance and old fashioned things like window glass don't tend to mix.  
  
He slams the heel of his palm against the large steel sliding door a few times, and hears the hollow boom echo inside the closed space.   
  
It takes a few minutes, a time in which Wat would have left, if he hasn't come for a reason. The door opens a crack, and a ghastly looking man pokes his head out.  
  
And immediately yells, and pulls back into the space. The door doesn't close, though, and when the head appears again, it's accompanied by shoulders and a torso, and the man has taken off his glasses. "What?" he grinds out. His face is gaunt, and his hair is a wreck, and he's got the pale, washed out look of a man who spends his days in front of the console.   
  
"You came to my café, talked to by brother and sister," Wat says, in lieu of a greeting.  
  
The man stares at him. "I did?" He pulls the door open further, and Wat sees there are no lights in – just the neon that filters through the boarded windows. The man isn't wearing a shirt, and his body is just as haggard as his face. He looks pulled, somehow – stretched longways, legs longer and torso narrower than it should be. "I suppose that's entirely possible," the man murmurs to himself, turning away from the door, muttering something quietly. When he sees Wat hasn't followed, he turns back, and waves him in. "Come on, then, come on."  
  
Wat steps carefully inside. This is more of Night City than he's ever seen before. He's seen the commercials that pound day and night from the vid screen in the city squares, and the personal advertisements that show up on his computer. He's seen the brochures and the pictures in the newspapers and on the telecasts. But he's never seen something inside the City, something that works for it, that does its bidding. It's a bit intimidating. "My name is Wat," the man calls across the open space. "My brother, Rhys, said – "  
  
"Did I say why?" the man calls over his introduction. He is leaning over a grungy looking range, into a dented sauce pan. He pokes at something with a wooden spoon, and Wat feels his grumble and complain at being left out. Wat crosses the room, comes to stand next to him, and peers in the pot. Rice. The programmer looks up at him, his eyes a blue that the fluorescents haven't duplicated yet. "Geoff, by the way. Chaucer. Geoffrey. Did I say why?"  
  
"Which is it?" Wat demands. "And did you say why what?"  
  
"Whichever," Geoff says with a shrug. "Did I say why I came to your café." He scrapes at the rice in the pot, and pulls a bit of yellow powder from nowhere, and adds it. The smell of saffron erupts around them.   
  
"Something about a virus," Wat says, and watches it all slam home in the programmer's face.  
  
"Oh," he says. " _Oh_. That café. That virus. Yes. Well. That virus." He stabs at the pot rather viciously.   
  
Wat crosses his arms over his chest and frowns. Honestly, what sort of host doesn't even offer a bit of his food? "Look," he says. "If there's something wrong, I need to know. I can't be shut down for any kind of viral related problem."  
  
"No, yes," Geoff says, rather confusingly. Then decides on: "No. Of course not. We haven't been able to – I haven't found anything yet." The words seem to stutter and start out of him, like cars bottlenecking and eking out one at a time.  
  
"You'll let me know," Wat demands.   
  
"Right," Geoff says, and then looks up at him, suddenly, his eyes blazing. "The Wired Dragon."  
  
Wat squints at him. "Yeah. Good for you." The man is clearly a user, and it's starting to make Wat nervous. But food can't be consumed with the speed, so the man is either on his way down, or so out of his mind he's wasting food. Or he's built up such a tolerance to the nausea that it doesn't matter.  
  
"Right. Right." Geoff takes the rice off the burner, which looks rather worse for the wear. "I'll come by and do a system scan, if you like. Check things out in the mainframe itself."   
  
"That isn't necessary," Wat protests immediately.   
  
"It's no trouble," Geoff insists. He holds up the rice. "You want?"  
  
Wat opens his mouth to accept, and then closes it. "When can you come?" he says, instead.   
  
Geoff sets the pot down again, and turns away for a towel. "Tuesday?" he asks. "You'll have to close the place down. I can't have other people in there while I'm digging around in circuitry."  
  
"Sure," Wat says.   
  
When it becomes apparent that he isn't going to receive any additional conversation, he sees himself out. The steel door clangs behind him, and he listens as an intricate series of locks fall into place. He wends his way down out of Night City, carefully avoiding the main entrance, and spends the long walk toward Tateyama thinking. About why the programmer hasn't looked him in the eye once, among other things.   
  


* * *

  
  
Tuesday, Geoff finds himself back in the south side of the city, remarking to himself that it's a miracle he even woke up to remember to come. He'd set himself an alarm and recording saying where he needed to be, but the state he was in this morning, it's only chance that he's gotten his feet underneath him and working.   
  
The dizziness has started to clear by the time he gets into the arcade, and he can feel the buzz that means the speed has started working. His thoughts clear with it, sweeping away the cobwebs of a sluggish, unmodified brain. By the time he comes to the Wired Dragon, he has a bounce in his step and a grin on his face.   
  
The café has, indeed, been closed. But when Rhys sees him approach, he undoes the locks on the door – a door Geoff is almost certain hadn't been there when last he'd visited – and lets him in before drawing the blinds again.   
  
Geoff finds the console, and attaches himself to the Sprawl, ignoring the available jack. It won't do him any good, after all, and he's looking for isolated repairs. In his mind's eye, the Sprawl spreads before him, and the small meeting rooms that are comprised of the café open themselves at the slightest brush of his mind. The wheels of coding expose themselves bit by bit, but all of the rooms have no trace of the virus he is tracking.  
  
There is residue, though. Viral residue. It has been here, and gone.  
  
"Find anything?"   
  
The voice pulls him sharply from the Sprawl back into reality, and the transition is less than fluid and makes his brain jump and sputter. He looks up, through his glasses, and the blaze of red makes the bile rise in the back of his throat. Wat is watching him, frowning.  
  
Geoff takes a deep breath, and focuses his mind, scans the man. He's being an idiot – it isn't the virus, no, it's red hair, so incredibly rare in this day and age, and Geoff's disgusted with himself for not having seen it. It's a modification, same as a third arm or blades in the knees would be. An incredibly expensive modification, and this is the poor side of town, so maybe there's more going on than he knows. Or maybe it's natural. Geoff supposes it's not impossible, if it  _is_  improbable.  
  
Except that on a second glance, he's wrong.  
  
There's the red of the hair, but there's more. It takes him pulling off his glasses a bit to notice it, but he slides them back up his nose immediately, and can tell the difference there – there's the red of Wat's hair, the tawny, lively red of something alight with flames. But there's also something else, the crawling red of movement, something that runs against the grain. Something that doesn't belong in the program.   
  
Geoff isn't sure, but Wat either  _is_  the virus or  _has_  the virus, and doesn't even know it. Yet.  
  
"Found something, yeah," Geoff says carefully, blinking slowly, his eyes tearing apart the programming of the virus piece by piece. It's self perpetuating, and Wat has to have been infected somewhere, but Geoff can't imagine where.   
  
"Can you fix it?" Wat asks, and sounds impatient.  
  
"Maybe," Geoff says slowly, staring at the man's head. "I'm not sure. I can try."   
  
"That's fantastic," Rhys says, clapping him on the back. It reminds Geoff that he's still attached to the Sprawl, and that any oddity up until now can easily be explained away as influenced by the work. But as he slips the gloves off, and steps away from the console, there are no more excuses, and he's still staring.   
  
"What's to be done?" Rhys asks, after Geoff has said nothing.  
  
"Don't jack in," Geoff replies, but to Wat. "Keep clear of the system. Just you. Let it filter itself out. You can reopen anytime you like, but don't jack in yourself."  
  
Wat looks like he wants to challenge this, or at least ask why the hell not, but instead he nods tersely.   
  
Geoff feels the buzzing in his head settle into a moderate hum, and manages to tear his eyes off of Wat's head. "Do you have a toilet?" he asks.  
  
He's led to a dank and filthy restroom, and he kneels on the damp, stained floor, and vomits into the basin.  
  


* * *

  
  
Geoff disappears for a day, and Wat figures it's for good, but it isn't.   
  
"We haven't had any other problems," Wat tells him as soon as he sees Geoff lingering in his doorway.   
  
"I should hope not," Geoff says happily, and takes him by the wrist. "Come on."  
  
Wat digs his heels in. "Absol – wha – what do you want?" he sputters, looking over his shoulder for Rhys to help. Rosamund is jacked in already, and humming a quiet tune to herself.  
  
"I had something I thought might help with the headaches," Geoff says with a smile. "Come on."  
  
Wat protests again, but Rhys sees the struggle and comes to usher him out, reminding him, rather unnecessarily, that he can't parole the rooms anymore, so he is, essentially, useless to their business. Wat is forced out the door, and forgets utterly that he should be pointing out that he's never mentioned his headaches to Geoff.  
  
The programmer leads him down the narrow street, not letting go of his wrist, and toward the Arcade. "They restocked my creds today, since I found the virus," the man says conversationally, and steers them down an alleyway Wat isn't sure he's ever seen before. "And this is really the only thing that ever calms me down for a few days."  
  
If this statement is something Wat is supposed to be able to follow, he doesn't manage it. "What does that have to do with me?" he says loudly.  
  
Geoff throws a look over his shoulder – a beaming, happy look. "You helped me find it. So you share in the spoils. And it really will help your head."  
  
"But how did you know about – " Wat starts, but his words trail off into nothing as Geoff leads him into a massive industrial building, washed in white plastic and chrome at the entranceway. There's a slogan splashed on the door that Wat doesn't have time to read, and soon his senses are hit by an odd combination of mild chlorine and lavender.   
  
"Two tables," Geoff is telling the girl at the counter, as Wat slowly works out where they are. "And one stall, two towels…no, four towels, and five or six of those." He points to a row of white plastic packets sitting on the desk at her elbow. "Six?" He tilts his head at the girl. "What do you think?"  
  
She looks him over. "Ten, at least," she replies, her voice bland, and Geoff slaps his cred ID down on the counter.   
  
"Ten it is," he says, and lets go of Wat's wrist finally.  
  
"Where are we?" Wat hisses, when Geoff has gathered three keys, four towels, and ten of the little packets into his arms.   
  
"A spa," Geoff replies, drawing out the vowel to a humorous length. "We're going to spend the day being pampered." They walk along a corridor, all in white, and Geoff drops a key into his hand, and tosses him a fluffy white towel. "Go into any of the A-level rooms with green lights on the doors. That key should open any available room. A masseuse should be along shortly."  
  
Wat holds the bit of plastic like it's a foreign object. "What about you?"   
  
Geoff holds up one of the other keys. "I'll be along shortly, too." He presses a button on a small panel, and a door slides open. "Go on," he says, and nods toward the hallway. "Have fun. Don't be shy."   
  
And without another word, the door closes behind him, and Wat finds himself alone in the corridor.   
  


* * *

  
  
Geoff's head is swimming from the detox.   
  
It's a delicate procedure, and far more money than it's worth for a programmer to have done, since he'll have to go back to using in the next day or so, once he receives another job file. But it's different from the withdrawal or the up, and it makes him feel good enough to tell himself that he won't go back to it, even though he knows he will.   
  
It takes about an hour, a little shorter than the standard spa package he's purchased for his companion, and he tries to ignore the small stab of guilt at the reminder that he's brought Wat here. It seemed like a good idea at the time – at the time being when he was still huffing powder, the special blend he used when he had to chase down particularly difficult jobs, and he could feel the dull scrape marks on the inside of his skull from the drug. It was perfectly logical, really, to bring a man infected with a virus to a spa for a day of treatment with the bonus money he'd received for catching him.  
  
Except that all of his data entry has been lies. He hasn't quarantined the man, he hasn't wiped him, and he certainly hasn't patched the virus. Wat can't infect anyone, not unless he patrols or jacks in, and Geoff has told him not to, but it is, frankly, still one of the worst ideas he's ever had.  
  
Don't get emotional, Edward had told him after he was promoted to an executive level position. Don't get emotional, and don't get involved. They aren't people. They're just big computers that walk and talk and get infected and infect other people and die.   
  
Except this walking computer has family, and doesn't know he's sick, and can't be cured.  
  
Geoff waits in the corridor for Wat to reemerge from whichever room he selected, a towel tied around his waist and one slung around his neck. He holds the remaining key in his hand, and the packets are still on top of the last towel. A few silent moments pass before Wat emerges, limping on what looks like both legs, and leans against the door frame.  
  
"Alright?" Geoff asks, when he's reached the man's side.  
  
"Gh," Wat replies, his eyes hazy. One hand grips the towel around his hips, and he doesn't look nearly as ghastly under the fluorescent lights as Geoff does.   
  
"They're good here," Geoff says, and takes his other arm, and helps him walk. "Feel like all your muscles've been sucked out?"  
  
"Hgg," Wat confirms, and staggers along after him. Geoff hears him try to swallow a few times, and leads him over to the elevator.   
  
"It'll pass," Geoff says kindly, and helps him lean against the wall inside the elevator. "How's your head?"  
  
"Better," Wat murmurs, his eyes shut. The viral red pulses a low, quiescent orange. "Where we goin'?"  
  
"Shower," Geoff says, running the edge of one of the packets underneath his fingernail.   
  
Wat's eyes snap open. "You can't afford that."  
  
"Can, actually," Geoff says blithely, and the elevator chimes to a stop. He doesn't have to help Wat walk this time, the man is powered under his own steam.  
  
"Look, I don't know what this is about," Wat says, clearly building up to a tirade. "But I don't know you, and you don’t know me, and you can't be spending this much money on – "  
  
"Sure I can," Geoff says easily, and leads them toward the end of the hall. This floor is hot from steam and water, and the hot rock therapy they do in the floor below, and it fogs up Geoff's glasses so that he has to squint to walk.   
  
He finds a room that has a corresponding number to the one engraved on the last key, and lets them in. Wat gasps behind him as they enter, and the door seals behind them and the key is fed into an electronic slot that will deliver it to the front desk. They have three hours, and unlimited water. Geoff has paid well.   
  
One of the walls is all mirror. There's a vanity, and a few daybeds, and more piles of towels laying about. A bath is sunken into the ground on the right side of the room, and there's a steam chamber on the other, and a large stall with a few shower heads across from them. It's more water than Geoff's ever seen in one place, and it's a terrible waste, and he doesn't care.  
  
Wat seems frozen in place, and Geoff turns around to smile at him, tosses him one of the packets. "Soap," he says. "Good for hair or body.  _Real_  soap, mind. Not that synthetic business that ruins your skin."  
  
Wat catches the packet, and looks from it to him. "You're serious," he says.  
  
"Of course I'm serious." Geoff pulls the towel off of his shoulders and takes his glasses off, and scrubs at the fog on them. When he looks up again, he smiles at Wat. "Just enjoy yourself." It's like giving a last rare steak to a puppy about to be euthanized, and it makes him feel like shit.   
  
He turns away to look in the mirror, Wat next to him, and when he looks up, he nearly loses his footing.   
  
"Whoa," Wat says, catches him by the arm, and the reflection explodes into a web of numbers.   
  
Geoff buckles under the image, and doesn't realize he's hit the ground until he feels the damp on his legs, and Wat's kneeling next to him. He tries to reach up to pull the glasses off, but it doesn't work, and he doesn't know how to get the words out to tell Wat.   
  
People are just walking computers. But sometimes, computers can be networked.   
  
In the two of them, still touching, Wat's hand clamped around his arm, Geoff can see the network. But it goes beyond the programming there, and into the creation of the program, and, for lack of a better term, every system crash and reboot that's occurred between the two. And how many times their programs have networked before, and on and on and farther back and farther back, until the irrefutable evidence before his eyes is that he's gone absolutely insane in the detox, and he needs a hit of speed  _immediately._  
  
The numbers break when Wat lets him go, and he rips off the glasses with a clatter.  
  
"What just happened?" Wat asks, and he sounds furious, but Geoff knows, just  _knows_  all of a sudden, that it's because he's scared.  
  
Geoff registers that he's shaking, and he's closer to the edge of the sunken bathtub than he ought to be, and tries to shove himself backward on the floor. The towel is tangled up in his legs but he's managed to stay decent. Inconsequential details like this keep flitting through his brain.  
  
He tests his voice, and it comes out shaky. His words come out on the far side of insane. "I know you," he says quietly.  
  
Wat makes an unimpressed noise, and sits back on his heels.   
  
Geoff looks at him, can't really see him, but won't risk the glasses again. "I know you. I've lived with you. Died…" His voice breaks off, and the numbers pound through his head again, like memory but more like data storage.   
  
"You're insane," Wat says.   
  
"Pick up my glasses," Geoff says quietly.  
  
Wat doesn't do it, and then, after a moment, he does. He holds them out by the bridge to Geoff, who shakes his head.   
  
"Put them on."  
  
Wat slips the glasses on, and there's a change in his breathing. "What – "  
  
"It's data. Take my hand, and look in the mirror."  
  
"What?" Wat says again, sounding more offended and angry than confused this time.  
  
"Just touch me, and look in the mirror, Wat," Geoff says, exhausted. He waits until he feels a pressure on his arm, Wat's fingers creeping around the crook of his elbow.   
  
Wat lets out a strangle cry, but it's quiet, and in the back of his throat. The fingers on his elbow tighten briefly, and then relax, but they don't let go. "What is this?" Wat says, sounding almost offended.  
  
"That's data," Geoff explains. "That's what I see all the time. Look for repeating sequences."  
  
"Look at my hair…"  
  
"Repeating sequences," Geoff snaps, and grabs at his hand. It takes a moment to find it, in the haze of his vision, but they collide eventually and Geoff holds on. "Repeating sequences of colors. That's your DNA, and the pattern of your life, but it isn't like other people's, and neither is mine. I let go – " He releases Wat's hand and Wat murmurs again. " – and it changes. That's what it's supposed to look like. We combine them again – " And Wat's noise of surprise proves the color change again, the reflexive shift as their DNA patterns recognize one another.   
  
"The world can only create DNA a certain amount of ways before it has to repeat," Geoff says. "That's a scientific tenet. Ours have been made before."  
  
"So have plenty of people's," Wat points out.   
  
"Ours have lived and died together, over and over, every single time they – we – " Geoff doesn't know how to explain it any better, and falls silent.   
  
Wat lets go of him and pulls the glasses off. He folds them up, Geoff can hear the quiet click of metal, and sets them on Geoff's leg.  
  
"So what," Wat says brusquely. "We're fated to be together? That isn't science. Theology went out a long time ago."   
  
"It's data," Geoff says, helpless to think of anything else.  
  
"Fuck data," Wat says sharply, and stands up. "I don't even  _know_  you."  
  
"We could've had this conversation twenty different ways," Geoff murmurs, mostly to himself. He doesn't know what to think of this, or how to think anymore, and his skin is itching for the drug, thinking maybe if he uses, he'll be able to run fast enough to figure it out.   
  
"Let me out," Wat says, his voice strong and demanding and, under most of it, frustrated. "Let me out, and give me my clothes back."  
  
The ludicrous urge to remind Wat that it was not he who took his clothes, Geoff gives him a helpless expression and doesn't say anything for a moment. "Is it so bad, not being able to control it?"   
  
Wat squints at him, like he can't decide where to start tearing that apart first.  
  
Geoff shakes his head, the never-mine-me-I'm-crazy gesture clear. Then he hesitates, and changes his mind. He's got to figure this out, or it's going to make him crazy. Crazier. "We all think we've got such an excellent handle on our lives," he says, thoughtful. "But we haven't. Maybe we just keep living the same lives over and over again. All of us," he clarifies. "Everyone we know, everyone we interact with, maybe it happens a different time each way, but we're all…just…" It sounds ridiculous even to him.  
  
Carefully, Wat eases down next to him again, hunched in on his shoulders. "So we, just, what. We're just supposed to – "  
  
"I haven't been with a man in ages," Geoff says, mostly to himself again.  
  
Wat smacks him in the arm. Geoff figures he doesn't really have to say anything aside from that. He does, though. "It's…I guess it's not that much more different from a blind date, or…" He breaks off into a shrug, and he's turning vaguely pink from the steam of the room or embarrassment or the fact that he's got a lunatic on his hands. Geoff feels vaguely bad for him.  
  
"What if we don't?" Geoff says.  
  
The other man looks up, and picks at a loose thread in the terrycloth absentmindedly. "What, just…ignore it? Pretend we – you never saw it?"  
  
Geoff shrugs his agreement. "What're they going to do?" As if there's a 'they' who watches over things like this.   
  
Wat looks at the placid water in the bathtub. "Or we could try it."   
  
Geoff cocks his head. "Do you even find me attractive?"   
  
A moment is spent being regarded by those glassy grey-blue eyes, and Geoff feels like he's been stripped of his skin and flipped inside out, like he's carrying his guts in a basket next to him. The eventual verdict is a head bob. "I suppose."  
  
Geoff laughs, the sort of relieved laugh that comes when the nerves are still there. "Yeah. Okay. Sure." It's insane. It's probably the most insane thing he's ever been party to, let alone come up with himself. Anyone else would have called the police on him by now. Would have reported him as burnt out, as having finally broken that last fiber of protective coating around his brain cells with the drugs.   
  
It's an oddly calm feeling, to know that someone might be as crazy as he is.   
  
Wat reaches out and takes the glasses, and puts them on him. Then he takes both of Geoff's hands, and holds them in his own, and looks demanding and expectant and rather adorable, in Geoff's own opinion. "Well?" he says. "Tell us a story, then."  
  
Geoff blinks, and grins dazzlingly, and turns to look at them in the mirror. It takes a few moments before the codes become images, and they're images like memories in his mind, not something he's seeing on the mirror. Something he's seen before, from one perspective or another. "I'm a poet," he mumbles thickly.  
  
"You're an idiot," Wat contradicts him, but doesn't let go.  
  
"Mangoes," Geoff mutters, and Wat breaks contact with one hand.  
  
"Give me those," he snaps, yanking the glasses off, and puts them on himself. He grabs up Geoff's hand again, turns to the mirror, and watches.  
  


* * *

  
  
The first breath comes in ragged, as though his lungs are rediscovering precisely how to operate, and his eyes slam open as oxygen hits his blood, his heart pounding. Geoff is coughing next to him, and spits blood onto the tile, pink and thin from the saliva. Wat pushes himself achingly up on one elbow, and sees that they've ended up curled together on the cold tile, face to face. Geoff's eyes are open, but it seems as though he's just come out of something. Wat pulls the glasses off of him, and they clatter to the floor.  
  
He figures it's been an hour, maybe less, but it's hard to tell. It's been lifetimes, it's been years, it's been the children and grandchildren of his friends and living and dying and childhoods and romance and theatrics and drama and calm. He checks the clock on the wall.  
  
If he'd been told that his entire span of multiple existences could be packed into forty-seven minutes, he'd never have believed it. But he believes this; that he can't seem to unravel his fingers from Geoff's.   
  
"Wow," Geoff says, and he sounds like an idiot.  
  
"Yeah," Wat says, blinking, and his stomach clenches, flutters. "That last one – "  
  
"I don't even think that exists anymore," Geoff says, full of wonder and twelve-year-old enthusiasm. "All the  _dust_."  
  
"I liked the one with the dreams," Wat says, trying to not think about dust and sunsets and Geoff's back under the night sky. "You weren't as much of a prat."  
  
Geoff doesn't hear him. "And horses, can you even imagine…"  
  
"Or in France," Wat says, his own voice sounding desperate now, before Geoff notices and he makes a fool of himself. "I don't think that river is there anymore."  
  
Geoff blinks at him, seems to realize he's there. His eyes are unfocused. Hungry.  
  
Wat looks away, and makes the unfortunate choice of down. His groin aches, and he squeezes his eyes shut, and rattles his head a bit to knock the thought loose.   
  
He feels his hand being taken by Geoff's again, but the rush of images they'd worked on circuiting between the two of them doesn't come this time. Just Geoff touching him, which  _really_  doesn't help him any.   
  
Holding Wat's digits in his hand, running his smooth fingers over the back and palm, Geoff effectively distracts him. Until he's leaning forward, and brushing his mouth over Wat's jaw. Wat doesn't pull back. "Intense," Geoff murmurs in his ear. Meaning this, or meaning what they've just seen, how many times they've watched their own bodies coming together before easing on to the next story of the both of them, the slipstream of data merciless to censorship.   
  
The end of towel that's tucked against his skin is pulled out slowly, a prisoner of Geoff's other hand, until his hip is bare and then the rest of him is, hard and embarrassing and he gives a small shudder against Geoff's chest as the man measures him with a stroke of his hand. "Nice," Geoff murmurs to him, against his cheek, lips meeting skin again, and Wat is helpless to do anything but close his eyes and try to breathe. "Knew you would be."   
  
A token protest finds its way out of Wat's mouth, but he finds he doesn't really mean it anymore, because it isn't true. He does know now, after all of that. "I don't even know you," Wat says, breathless, helpless.  
  
"I know," Geoff breathes back into his mouth. "But don't you want to?" They kiss, slowly, with confidence borne of having done this so many times but also never, and Wat's surprised by how nice it is, by how good Geoff feels.  
  
"Come on," Geoff says, pulling away with a pat to his hip, and a less abrupt departure of his mouth, as though he can't quite bring himself to stop. Still, he manages to get up, and brings Wat up with him. "I've paid for a shower," he declares, "and we're damn well going to have one."   
  
He doesn't even bat an eyelash when, on the way into the massive glass stall, Wat hooks a finger into the waist of his own knotted towel and pulls, exposing the lean, pale length of Geoff's entire body. It's skinny – ravaged and unhealthy and all bones and skin. But unmodified by any science, like his own. It's a comforting sight, somehow.   
  
The heat inside the room is even worse, as Geoff kicks on the water from two off the facing showerheads. The programmer abandons him only momentarily, to retrieve the packets of soap – how he finds his way to them is a mystery still unclear to Wat, without the glasses – and then he is back, and everything is wet, and hot, and pinking skin and water in his eyes.   
  
"Come here," Geoff says, smiles, tugs him close by the shoulder and turns him so that he's facing away. A sound of ripping synthetic and then Wat feels Geoff's hands in his hair, and the tension in him starts to eke away, down the drain sliver by sliver with the warm water. It's just the comfortable side of too hot, and it makes his skin tingle pleasantly. Geoff works his head from neck to crown, then up to hairline and back again, and side to side, scrubbing and circling and pulling his hair into soapy peaks.  
  
Wat's just gone boneless again when Geoff steers him back into the water, Wat leaning against his narrow chest and feeling the soap trickle down the back of his neck as he's rinsed. "'S'nice," he tells the steam, his eyes closed as his head lolls backwards.   
  
Geoff makes a noise of attentive agreement, and Wat turns against Geoff while his hair is worked through a second time, to rinse out all the lather. He tries the kiss this time, delighted to find it just as odd and exhilarating as before, only shorter. Smaller, breaking kisses necessitated by the amount of water running over both of their faces. It makes Wat laugh, startled, and tangle his own fingers into Geoff's hair, hauling him closer and down and more.   
  
They switch, Geoff happily bending his neck for Wat to tend to his hair, the dull blonde gone shiny and nice under the rare ministration of a proper cleaning. When they're both shampooed and rinsed and more languid than Wat figures they really ought to be, Geoff circles again, pulls him out of the spray for a breath stealing kiss, and touches him between his legs.   
  
Nothing, nothing they've seen prepares Wat for the way his stomach turns over and slips into his chest for a moment. His lungs struggle through the steam for enough air, and Geoff's wicked grin makes his head fall back and his feet spread and he thunks against the glass, dazed but happy. The water patters down on both of them, turning the curls of Wat's pubic hair into a slick of dark orange, and Geoff brushes through it a few times, which is almost worse than the actual touching.   
  
It's like he can't think, all of a sudden, only it isn't sudden at all – it's since he came-to next to the programmer, or earlier – since he first listened to the man spout his nonsense, or since he staggered, boneless, from the massage table, or from when he entered the building at Geoff's behest and generosity, or from the moment he felt a flash of irritation at that glassy user's expression. It isn't sudden, it's just  _been_  there waiting for him to touch and hold, the same way his hands skate over the steam-slicked skin of Geoff's back and feels the shifting sharp bone of his shoulders as their arms move, adjust, react.  
  
Fair is fair, Wat thinks, and reaches down for Geoff, who muffles a yell into his jaw, and his hips cant forward like he can't help it.   
  
Geoff teases him relentlessly, and Wat manages to turn the tables more than enough times (with the extra packets of soap, of all things), until they're both dizzy and yelling by the time they slump against the glass.   
  
It takes another few minutes after that to wash up, and Wat doesn't realize how long they've really taken together until he looks at the clock, and feels a flash of regret. Geoff's drying him off carefully, letting him splay on one of the daybeds as he works him down with long, steady swipes of one of the towels, when Wat tries to work out how to ask if maybe this wasn't such a bad idea after all, this whole coding thing, and if Geoff might want to try it again some time. But Geoff is kissing him again, and Wat doesn't much worry about where their clothes are or what happens next.  
  


* * *

  
  
Geoff watches Wat sleep.  
  
Between the lazy rotations of the ceiling fan and the poorly boarded up windows, what's left to be called daylight is severely distorted over the bed. Splashes of blue and green neon, cut to ribbons by the fan, and a bit of orange creeping up the back of Wat's foot, slatted out by the shutters. He's on his stomach, arms burrowed under the pillows, and the sheet has ridden low on his hips.   
  
Geoff is propped on his side, elbow out, head in his hand, watching Wat's back move up and down as he breathes. Up, down, still for a moment. Over and over again.   
  
Carefully, Geoff reaches up and pulled his glasses off.  
  
They fall, a quiet impact on the bed, between them. His vision shutters into lines and blurs and fuzzy shapes; Geoff reaches out, and runs a hand down the curve of Wat's back. The man murmurs in his sleep, but doesn't shift. Geoff keeps up his petting, careful and light, from the middle of his shoulder blades to the bottom of his spine. His fingers pool in the dip there for a moment, and Wat murmurs again, and Geoff smiles to himself. His fingers creep again, over the curve of Wat's buttocks, over to the side, around his side, and give the hipbone there a slip of his fingertips. Then back to his spine, up again to the back of his neck. Feeling for something, but Geoff isn't sure what. Just feeling, maybe.  
  
The touch makes Wat stretch, hands reaching out on the spartan mattress, over the threadbare sheet, to knead at the wall that serves as a headboard. The pillow tumbles and slips away as Wat turns his head, and Geoff can just make out his face, blurred and distorted.  
  
"Time is it?" Wat murmurs into his arm, and Geoff feels his spine stretch and relax under his palm. He draws another circuit up and down, over the smooth skin, before he answers.  
  
"Evening," he murmurs back, tempering his voice to the dim light and Wat's own muzzled voice.   
  
"Already?" Wat speaks mostly to himself, it sounds like, and curls onto his side. Geoff's hand slips to his hip, and Wat settles himself closer, pulling the glasses out of the way. He folds them carefully and sets them on the pillow beside the bed. "Can you see me?" he asks, sounding genuinely curious.  
  
Geoff manages his hand onto Wat's cheek flawlessly, and draws a thumb over his mouth, feeling the sharp inhale of breath. "Of a sort," Geoff confesses, and draws him into a kiss. Wat shifts under him, the sheet crumbling between them, legs tangled, and pulls him down by his shoulders. "I can see," he says against the skin of Wat's cheek, drawing his mouth over the rough surface. "Up close."   
  
He can feel Wat frown, and the hands leave his shoulders to pull at his hair, to bring them face to face. "How well?"  
  
Geoff shrugs. "Well enough." He blinks, his vision swimming, and a slice of light illuminates Wat's hair for a moment. It sends a shiver of discord down Geoff's back, and he forcibly ignores it. "Does it bother you that much?"  
  
Wat hesitates, Geoff can feel it in his chest. But he strokes Geoff's hair just the same, considers, and his voice is quiet when he speaks. "If you knew what I look like," he starts, and sounds remorseful enough that Geoff knows exactly where this is going. He's had this conversation before.  
  
"I do know what you look like," he tells Wat, blinks closer to him, and draws a hand down his cheek, down his neck, over his chest. "My hands tell me everything I need to know." His fingers find Wat's, and pull them to his mouth to kiss. "That's how I live," he tells the fingerprints, the space between thumb and index. "The glasses let me see you in code, the programs that make you up – "  
  
"I'm not a program," Wat protests, but slides his fingers over Geoff's mouth again anyway.   
  
"DNA is just another computer," Geoff says carelessly. "Proteins, cells, it's all just data, it reads like a program. The glasses let me see things, and my brain translates that data into images. You saw."  
  
Wat shifts against him again, closer into his warmth. They're both on their sides, almost, chest to chest, and Geoff flourishes the sheet up over both of them, enveloping them in the light brush of cotton. "Then why not leave them on?"  
  
The unspoken question, here, is why Geoff doesn't want to see Wat. He sighs a little, through his nose, which he then presses against Wat's forehead, inhales his scent. Human. Not like the warm plastic and burning data smell of the consoles. When he speaks, it is like this, against Wat's forehead. "When you can see programs, you can see all the parts of it. The parts that are infected by viruses."  
  
Wat is still for a moment, for too long of a moment, and Geoff pulls away, pillows his hand under his arm. He can feel the exact moment when Wat figures it out. "I'm sick."  
  
"A virus, yes," Geoff tells him. He reaches for Wat's hair, trails his fingers to the back of it, taps. "Just here."   
  
"I get headaches," Wat tells him. "That doesn't mean – "  
  
"Wat," Geoff says, stops him. "Do you really want me to tell you this?"  
  
Wat doesn't answer, just tucks himself under Geoff's chin. His arms wrap around Geoff's sides, burrowing into his heat. After a moment, as the fan whirs lazily above them, Wat speaks again. "It's bad enough that you don't want to see it?"  
  
Geoff strokes his hair, the wicked red smooth and soft under his fingers. "I don't want to have to think about it when I’m with you." Thinking about it would mean trying to fix it, would mean speed and the gloves and the console and not sleeping. Things that Geoff can't do when he's with Wat, things he won't let himself do. With Wat, he's just the programmer who uses, who's slowly carving out the inside of his skull with white powder. With Wat, he can be selfish. It's about him, not Wat.   
  
Again, Wat is silent. A longer time, this round, and Geoff wonders if he may have gone back to sleep, except he can feel the pulse below his fingertips just at the base of Wat's skull, and knows his heart is pounding too fast for it. "Am I dying?" Wat asks him, just a whisper against his throat.  
  
Geoff wants to tell him that they're all dying, sooner or later, in the scheme of things. That none of them are long for this world, with all of the implants and the drugs and the Sprawl killing their brain cells bit by bit. What he says, though, is: "Yes."  
  


* * *

  
  
Wat can't sleep, and Geoff isn't even pretending to, so he slips away just before dawn. He doesn't say anything to the programmer, just slides the clanking metal door closed as quietly as he can, and walks, slowly, savoring each step despite the way his head throbs with his pace, down to the south of the city.   
  
He spends the day with his family – not just Rhys and Rosamund, but he convinces them to take the ferry into Tokyo Bay to see the rest of their brothers and sisters – and tries not to think about the way his head aches, so different from the way his body does. The latter reminds him that he should stay long, because this is his family, but he doesn't want to. Timeliness has suddenly been given a price, and Wat wants to buy until he's penniless.   
  
No one asks why he's come to visit, not even Rhys, and he doesn't supply a reason.   
  
After the dinner plates are cleared, and Wat's head aches so badly he can hardly see, he excuses himself. His mother walks him back to the dockyard, and he kisses her cheek and tells her that he loves her. She pats his hand and smiles as he gets onto the Ferry, and waves as he pulls away.  
  
As soon as he hits the south shore, he goes to his bank, and cashes out all the cred in his account. He finds a market, and buys a bag full of ripe mangoes, and a small glass jar of clover honey that costs nearly more than he has. He saves enough for a ticket to the north border, into Night City, and then he has nothing left.  
  
He makes it to Geoff's apartment an hour after what's left to be called sunlight that filters through the pollution has disappeared from the sky. He lets himself in the same way he left that morning – quietly, and anxiously. The programmer is seated at the console, one glove on, the other hand holding a small baggie full of white powder in his hand. He looks up, startled, when Wat comes in. And smiles.   
  
"You're back," he says, pleased, and the glasses slip a notch down his nose. His eyes are clear and blue and his words are slow – not slow, but paced like a normal human being. He hasn't used yet, and Wat knows that it wouldn't bother him if the man had, but for some reason, he's relieved. "And you've brought me something," Geoff says, sounding utterly delighted, and pushes himself up with his hands on his knees. The glove to the console falls away, and he carefully sets the bag of powder on the floor.  
  
Wat offers the bag, and Geoff peers inside, and then back up at him, his expression wry. "Are you trying to give me a digestive problem?" he asks, his voice mischievous, but he reaches inside and pulls out a piece of fruit anyhow. "How's your family?" He leads the way into the kitchen, and Wat follows, surprised by the level of comfort between them.   
  
"How did you know I went to see my family?" Wat asks, and sets the glass jar down on the counter. He rotates it slowly with the tips of his fingers.   
  
"It's preferable to thinking you've run off to see your wife," Geoff says around a mouthful of fruit, and takes a seat at Wat's hip, and pulls him onto his lap.   
  
"I haven't got a wife," Wat says, but wraps one arm around Geoff's neck anyway.  
  
The mango is set onto the table next to the jar, and Geoff leans his head against Wat's chest and sighs, and laces their fingers together. "Sure you have," he says quietly. Wat blinks a little, soaks this in, before Geoff speaks again. When he does, his voice is full of sparkle. He untangles his fingers from Wat's and taps the glass jar. "What's this for, then?"   
  
Wat doesn't answer, because the smug bastard sounds like he already knows.  
  


* * *

  
  
They discover that, with enough of an endorphin overload, Wat can still feel the ache at the base of his skull. He just doesn't mind it so much.   
  
Geoff's back bends into a bow as he arches up off the bed, his fingers clenching so hard that he can feel his fingernails digging into his palms even though he's gripping the sheets. When he collapses back again, it's as though all the strings to a marionette have been cut, and his breathing is rapid and even a bit wheezy.   
  
Wat pulls his head out from between Geoff's thighs and wipes one corner of his mouth with a thumb, and grins. "Alright?" he says, and nudges Geoff's raised knee with his nose.  
  
Geoff tries to speak, but all that comes out is a mostly incoherent noise, the first time around. After swallowing and a few more heaving breaths, he manages real words. "You're going to kill me," he says.  
  
"Mm," Wat replies, slinking back up Geoff's body. Their groins brush and spark, and Geoff yelps.  
  
"I can't, it – ah – too much, too soon again – "  
  
"And again, and again," Wat agrees, and nips at his mouth and kisses him. Geoff dissolves into the kiss, his brain backfiring and revving up anew. It's gone from kitchen table to kitchen floor to the hallway wall to the bed, and Geoff's already so tender that the slightest touch is like fire but still, so, so good. They ran out of honey some point between the hallway and the bedroom, but Geoff can still taste it in the roof of his mouth, and finds patches of it swiped on various body parts, his own and Wat's, often enough to renew the flavor.  
  
"You're impossible," Geoff accuses in a growl against Wat's mouth, and Wat doesn't disagree.   
  
He manages to flip the man, turns him onto his stomach and kisses down his spine, licks him open until Wat's ruined his sheets once and Geoff's gets them both hard again. And then fucks him slow, so slow it makes Wat stretch and bend like a cat; and when they come, it isn't together, and it isn't the last time, either.   
  
It's a long, long night.  
  
But in the end, it isn't nearly long enough.  
  
When Geoff wakes, it isn't morning, and something feels wrong. His eyes adjust slowly to their limited vision, and he feels Wat crushing his fingers in his own strong hand, and looks down. Their eyes meet, in the dull pulse of the neon that cuts over the bed, and Wat's mouth is pinched tight.   
  
Geoff kisses his forehead, and they both close their eyes, and he holds Wat until the man goes still, and the virus is quarantined for good.  
  
For the first time in his life that he can remember – in any of the lives that he has seen – Geoffrey Chaucer cries.  
  


* * *

  
  
It's a shockingly bright spring day, so bright that Wat has to shield his eyes and squint down the dusty dirt road. There's a man walking toward him, and he tries to sit still and wait, and fails, and walks down the path he has already traveled to meet the man faster. He starts speaking almost before he is in ear shot of the other man.  
  
"You took your sweet time," he shouts.  
  
The man crests the slope of the sun, and Wat can drop his hand to look. It's Geoff, but not Geoff, because he's wearing these ridiculous, god-awful leather trousers, and this pompous bit of leather and fur for a coat, and his shirt's open nearly to his navel. He's got a small green feather in his hand, and he's twirling it by the nib.   
  
They stop in front of one another, and Geoff's eyes crinkle at the sides, and he skeptically examines Wat from head to toe. "You don't look dead," Geoff says decisively.   
  
"Neither do you," Wat says, which he thinks is rather more remarkable, since he's always looked alive, but Geoff never quite has before.   
  
"And this doesn't look like Heaven," Geoff adds, eyes darting out over his shoulder and back to Wat's face.   
  
Wat turns to look down the path, tipping one shoulder toward Geoff. "No, it doesn't." He glances down at the feather, and nudges Geoff in the arm. "What's that?"  
  
Geoff looks down at his fingers, as if he wasn't aware they were carrying anything at all. "Phoenix feather."  
  
"Phoenixes are red," Wat protests.  
  
Geoff shrugs. "Not this one." He holds the feather eyelevel and lets it go, and the wind carries it off. It flutters out over the grass, and Wat thinks he sees it land somewhere. But then, maybe he doesn't really.   
  
They're silent for a moment, and Wat's about to ask whether or not Geoff knows if this is the road to Rouen or not, as he's seen no one else travel it in the four days that he's waited underneath the beech tree. Waited for reasons he doesn't remember. But then Geoff inhales sharply, and squints at him, and looks confused. He tilts his head to the side, and asks, haltingly, "Have we ever, ah," he wiggles one finger between the two of them, "met before?"  
  
Wat thinks hard. "Here, you mean?"  
  
Geoff nods.  
  
"I don't think so," Wat says. "Somewhere else, I think."  
  
"Ah," Geoff says, as though that settles it. He beams happily, and leans down to press a chaste kiss to Wat's hairline, hands behind his back as he leans. Then he takes a step away, and extends one of his hands. Looks over his shoulder when Wat hasn't taken it. "Coming?"  
  
Wat puts his hand into Geoff's, and their fingers lace as they walk down the warm summer path to Rouen. 


End file.
